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Religion and Nationalism Among the Albanians UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) Religion and the politics of identity in Kosovo Duijzings, G.H.J. Publication date 1999 Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Duijzings, G. H. J. (1999). Religion and the politics of identity in Kosovo. General rights It is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: https://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible. UvA-DARE is a service provided by the library of the University of Amsterdam (https://dare.uva.nl) Download date:30 Sep 2021 151 CHAPTER 6 Nairn Frashëri's Qerbelaja: Religion and Nationalism among the Albanians I have argued previously that religion is a major factor in processes of identification in the Balkans, and in most of my chapters, which deal with cases at the grass-roots level, I have illustrated this principle. In the last two chapters I will shift the locus of attention from the local to the national level, and try to analyse the manner in which religion has influenced the ways in which the Albanian and the Serbian nations have been 'imagined' (Anderson 1991).1 In both chapters I would like to focus on the attempts of nineteenth century intellectuals and ideologists of both sides to incorporate religious elements in their respective nationalisms. As I said earlier, nationalism, even though a modern ideology, has often resorted to 'pre-modern' values and symbols, borrowed in particular from kinship and religion. A comparison of the development of Albanian and Serbian national ideology is particularly interesting, because in both cases there were attempts to use religious images in order to sacralise the nation, but within completely different contexts and with quite opposite results: unlike Serbian nationalism, where ethnic and religious identity have merged, Albanian nationalism nowadays lacks any strong religious attachments. Nevertheless, at the turn of the century, there were some efforts in Albania to inject religious elements into Albanian national ideology. I am particularly referring here to the Albanian national poet Nairn Frasheri, who tried to make (Shi'ite) Bektashi symbols and myths part of Albanian national discourse. More specifically, Frashëri tried to promote the Kerbela myth (see chapter 4) as a source of inspiration in the struggle against Ottoman domination, not unlike the way Serbian nationalists used the Kosovo myth. Moreover, it is interesting to see that 11 agree with Richard Jenkins (1997:107) that the 'cultural stuff with which groups mark themselves off and define their identities is not irrelevant to an understanding of ethnic processes. See also Cora Govers & Hans Vermeulen, who note a renewed trend in ethnic studies towards the analysis of the content of ethnicity, i.e. of culture in the sense of collective representation. They have termed this shift in attention the constructionist turn in the study of ethnicity (1997:8). 152 both myths, the Serbian-Orthodox myth about the Battle of Kosovo and the Shi'ite myth about the Battle of Kerbela, are very similar in content and style. In both cases the plot of the story is centred around a lost battle, which makes them examples of what Elias Canetti has called 'religions of lament': "The legend around which they form is that of a man or a god who perishes unjustly. (...) This is the one death which should not have taken place, and the grief it arouses is beyond all measure. (...) His death is not recognised by the mourners. They want him alive again. (...) [I]n lamenting him, they feel themselves as persecuted. Whatever they have done, however they have raged, for this moment they are aligned with suffering" (Canetti 1962:143- 145). Suffering, so ubiquitous in the Balkans, is an element which in one way or another has found expression in Balkan nationalism, and, unfortunately, it is all too often in the name of this suffering that new crimes are committed. Albanian nationalism and the overcoming of religious divisions From the beginning the Albanian national movement has been confronted with a situation of strong internal religious divisions. The Albanians in the Balkans belong to three different faiths (Islam, Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism), and if we add the Bektashis as a separate religious community —which it de facto has been— than we have a fourfold religious divide.2 Although Albanian nationalist ideology claims that religion was never important — 'Albanianism' being the only true faith of the Albanians— religion has caused deep divisions within Albanian society, constituting a major obstacle to national unity at the end of the nineteenth century. The threat of internal cleavages along religious lines was reinforced by the fact that many higher ecclesiastics, Albanians as well as non-Albanians, tended to define the ethnicity of their believers in terms other than Albanian, thus inhibiting the development of an Albanian national consciousness: during the 2 Although most Albanians (80-90% of all Albanians in the Balkans) are Muslims, in Albania itself the predominance of Islam is slightly less pronounced, especially when we take into account the traditionally strong Bektashi presence. Slightly more than half of the Albanians in Albania proper are Sunni Muslims (55%), while the rest of the population is divided between Orthodox (20%), Bektashis (15%) and Catholics (10%). These figures, which are based on the 1942 census, are reproduced in Daniel (1990:2). One can safely assume that the basic proportions have remained more or less the same. 153 late Ottoman period, for instance, the Orthodox Albanians in the south were subjected to a process of Hellenization, while orthodox Sunni Muslims were being defined as 'Turks' (Peyfuss 1992).3 Therefore, since the nineteenth century there have been continuous attempts to neutralise the legacy of religious cleavages for the politics of Albanian national identity. Since none of the faiths was in the position to unite all Albanians on a religious platform, language became the main vehicle: the Albanian language —very distinct from the languages of its direct (Slav and Greek) neighbours— was the only factor that could bridge the differences between various religious and regional identities.4 Religion as a source of communal identity was and still is being de-emphasised systematically. In present-day Kosovo, an area where the level of religiosity of the population was above the Yugoslav average, religion is almost irrelevant in official political life (but see chapter 3). Although more than 90% of the Albanian population in Kosovo is Muslim, Islam has played no role of importance in political mobilisation, and Catholics have become as prominent members of the Albanian resistance against Serbian hegemony as their Muslim compatriots. Because of this legacy of internal religious divisions Albanian nationalism is not clothed in religious terms, in striking contrast to Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian Muslim nationalism 3 At the end of the nineteenth century, the Ottoman government strictly prohibited all publications in Albanian, which explains why most Albanian books were printed abroad. Also in schools, which were virtually all maintained by clergymen, the language of instruction was usually not Albanian, but Greek (in schools run by the Greek- Orthodox Church), Italian (Catholic schools), and Turkish (Muslim schools) (see Jacques 1995:276). 4 Apart from the Albanian language it was hard for the Albanians to identify other markers of national identity or symbols of common history. Skenderbeg, Albania's national hero, was probably one of the few historical figures who was sufficiently religiously ambiguous or 'undetermined' to be acceptable to all. Skenderbeg (as well as his father Gjon Kastrioti) changed religious allegiances several times during his lifetime: he was baptized as a Christian, raised as a Muslim, and became again Christian on his return to Albania. Although fifteenth-century European sources celebrated him as the 'Champion of Christianity' fighting against the rule of Islam, nineteenth-century Albanian intellectuals saw him mainly as the figure who liberated Albanians from foreign domination. They pushed the religious (Christian) component of his resistance to the background (see Jacques 1995:236; Logoreci 1977:30-31; Skendi 1980; Skendi 1956:313-314). 154 which have clear religious overtones.3 From the beginning, Albanian nationalists have propagated a kind of 'civil religion' of Albanianism, which was epitomised in Pashko Vasa's famous O moj Shqypni ('Oh poor Albania'), one of the earliest and most influential nationalist poems in Albanian literature, published in 1879-1880 (Faensen 1980:148-151; Elsie 1995:258-267). The author, who was of north Albanian Catholic background, lamented the fate of Albania, divided as it was along the lines of competing ethno-religious affiliations. Albanians, you are killing each other, Shqyptar, me vllazèn jeni t'u vra, You are divided into a hundred factions, Ndër nji qind çeta jeni shperda; Some say: "I believe in God", others: "I in Allah"; Sa thon kam fe, sa thon kam din, Some: "I am a Turk", others: "I am Latin" Njeni: jam turk, tjetri: latin Some say: "I am Greek", others: "I am Slav", Do thon: jam grek, shkje disa tjerë, But you are all brothers, you miserable people! Por jeni vllazèn t'gjith more t'mjer! Priests and hoxhas have deceived you Priftnit e hoxhët ju kan hutue, In order to divide you and to keep you poor.
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